Just made my first Student Loan Payment and It was Empowering

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LivingMyBestLife

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Only 239 payments left to go before i'm debt free!

How is everyone else debt repayments going?

I'm on REPAY, been on EBT (government food stamps) and semihomeless. I haven't had a tax return in over 7 years because I haven't filed taxes in that time period due to not having work (Not technically true because I made around 17 cents from Youtube views on my channel but I havn't got paid for that yet).

It was very easy to get on REPAY after telling them my situation. The student loan servicer was very nice to me on the phone but the librarian kept telling me to get off the phone because it took a while when I was on hold. Anyone have any repayment questions about their pharmacy loans feel free to DM me.

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Only 239 payments left to go before i'm debt free!

How is everyone else debt repayments going?

I'm on REPAY, been on EBT (government food stamps) and semihomeless. I haven't had a tax return in over 7 years because I haven't filed taxes in that time period due to not having work (Not technically true because I made around 17 cents from Youtube views on my channel but I havn't got paid for that yet).

It was very easy to get on REPAY after telling them my situation. The student loan servicer was very nice to me on the phone but the librarian kept telling me to get off the phone because it took a while when I was on hold. Anyone have any repayment questions about their pharmacy loans feel free to DM me.

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What a life, the journey to get to zero. Just 20 more years of homelessness and lost opportunity cost to go until you’re free!
 
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I hope things turn around for you. I'm also doing REPAYE (I don't get to have $0 monthly payments though).
 
So you are telling me you haven't worked in seven years? Not even an intern or anything while in pharmacy school?
 
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Income beneath the level to make any payments which means it's a "free" month. No outside employment during school is a recipe for disaster in this profession especially now.

Unfortunately, I would go as far as to say that even for a large percentage of the students who actually do hold intern/technician jobs during school, it doesn't give them much of an advantage when it comes to finding a job after graduation. I'm a P4 student who started working as an intern for a local hospital network in my P2 year, and all the interns were asked to resign a couple weeks ago. Not only that, but we were also told that the hospital would be instituting a new policy of hiring only residency-trained graduates (even for part-time and PRN positions). So basically, since none of us will be eligible for pharmacist jobs with the organization upon our graduation, we're sort of in the same position as P4 students who never worked (aside from the fact that the intern experience could potentially make us competitive for residency positions).
 
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Imagine how empowering your last payment will be!
 
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Unfortunately, I would go as far as to say that even for a large percentage of the students who actually do hold intern/technician jobs during school, it doesn't give them much of an advantage when it comes to finding a job after graduation.

This is patently false.
 
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This is patently false.

Could you elaborate? Maybe it depends on the region of the country someone is in? Of course, this is one of those n=1 anecdotes, but all I know is that there are no hospitals in my region of the southeast that will hire a new graduate who hasn't completed residency, even if they have intern experience. If there's a way I can leverage my intern experience to get a hospital pharmacist job (not including residency positions) that I haven't heard about, I would appreciate it if you could discuss a bit more about it.
 
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Could you elaborate? Maybe it depends on the region of the country someone is in? Of course, this is one of those n=1 anecdotes, but all I know is that there are no hospitals in my region of the southeast that will hire a new graduate who hasn't completed residency, even if they have intern experience. If there's a way I can leverage my intern experience to get a hospital pharmacist job (not including residency positions) that I haven't heard about, I would appreciate it if you could discuss a bit more about it.
I think it is more appropriate to say that in 2019 and beyond,

The vast majority of pharmacists hired to full time positions will have intern experience, but the vast majority of students with intern experience will not be hired as pharmacists to full time positions.
 
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I think it is more appropriate to say that in 2019 and beyond,

The vast majority of pharmacists hired to full time positions will have intern experience, but the vast majority of students with intern experience will not be hired as pharmacists to full time positions.

This makes sense. I had just interpreted JustFillIt's post as them implying that intern experience on it's own can still qualify a new graduate for a hospital job, but maybe he meant what you had posted.
 
This makes sense. I had just interpreted JustFillIt's post as them implying that intern experience on it's own can still qualify a new graduate for a hospital job, but maybe he meant what you had posted.
Well there are several confounding factors that may bias results so it’s hard to accurately assess whether people are hired without residencies due to their intern experience or something else.

For example, if you were the son of a VP of a health system who interned at that hospital and was hired on after graduating, would you attribute it to the fact that you had intern experience or the fact that you had connections? Nepotism, probably, but on the surface level, to most everyone else (who likely won’t know about the connections part), it may seem like they were hired on due to their intern experience.
 
I can feel the end of Walmart even "promoting" techs to pharmacy intern positions.
 
Meanwhile that loan is collecting interest...
 
I hope things turn around for you. I'm also doing REPAYE (I don't get to have $0 monthly payments though).
Eh I'm not that stressed about it to be honest. I'm more worried about having a steady and safe living environment, having access to constant high speed internet (to expand my mind) and finding my future wife. It would be really nice to find a pharmacist job but that might not be in the cards for me. At least for the next few years. I'm kinda taking this time to relax and de-stress from pharmacy school. I am still looking for work at least once a week on Indeed and getting licensed in multiple states. I'm planning WV, MD and I already have DC. According to some documents I have read these all have decent opportunities in terms of pharmD employment. Of course it's all relative. I know the market is tight everywhere, and especially tight for a disabled individual such as myself. But I will continue to do my best to find gainful employment.
 
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Cannot say enough how much I appreciate my debt free education...
What are you talking about? You already put down the sweat, blood, and sanity down payment already and isn't your retirement such that you're in already some sort of life debt to yourself? There's more ways to pay for a college education than just money...our Uncle always seems to get the better of these deals unfortunately for the counterparty.

Unfortunately, I would go as far as to say that even for a large percentage of the students who actually do hold intern/technician jobs during school, it doesn't give them much of an advantage when it comes to finding a job after graduation. I'm a P4 student who started working as an intern for a local hospital network in my P2 year, and all the interns were asked to resign a couple weeks ago. Not only that, but we were also told that the hospital would be instituting a new policy of hiring only residency-trained graduates (even for part-time and PRN positions). So basically, since none of us will be eligible for pharmacist jobs with the organization upon our graduation, we're sort of in the same position as P4 students who never worked (aside from the fact that the intern experience could potentially make us competitive for residency positions).

To some degree, I do completely acknowledge this that work is not as rewarding in a job sense than it used to be. On the other hand, I hope you will get some connections to get a residency position or your next job. (That said, I'm going to be interested to see if that sort of policy does not come back to haunt them someday, I know that is the case with Allina in Minnesota in terms of a dark reputation among a generation of pharmacists where recruitment has to come from the young now).
 
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To some degree, I do completely acknowledge this that work is not as rewarding in a job sense than it used to be. On the other hand, I hope you will get some connections to get a residency position or your next job. (That said, I'm going to be interested to see if that sort of policy does not come back to haunt them someday, I know that is the case with Allina in Minnesota in terms of a dark reputation among a generation of pharmacists where recruitment has to come from the young now).

Luckily, the connections I made have paid off at least somewhat in the form of 2 LOR's for residency programs (although I would honestly rather still score a hospital pharmacist job without doing a residency first if I could). I think that one of hospital network's reasons they cited as justification for the residency-trained-pharmacists-only policy is the sheer number of residents they graduate per year, which is 10-12, depending on the year (always at least 10). Over half of the most recent group of graduates (who all finished the program back in June 2019) are still trying to land hospital pharmacist positions, so as one of my former managers said to me, "It wouldn't really be fair for us to hire a new graduate who didn't complete a residency when so many of our own residency graduates are having a hard time finding jobs." Of course, it doesn't help matters that there is at least one other residency program located ~30 minutes away, although it doesn't accept/graduate nearly as many pharmacists per year.
 
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